


Realising

by FloreatCastellum



Series: Missing Hogwarts Moments [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, F/M, Falling In Love, Heartbreak, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-03 15:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19467244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FloreatCastellum/pseuds/FloreatCastellum
Summary: Harry realises he is in love with Ginny.





	1. Chapter 1

He sat with a dull expression in front of the fire, though the weather outside meant it was far too hot to be doing so. His fingers fumbled over R.A.B’s locket as he stared into the hot embers, resisting the urge to scream and throw it right in there.

He had already snappily told Ron and Hermione that he was not coming to lunch. He did not want to be around people. He did not want to discuss any of it. He did not want to see Dumbledore’s empty chair and he did not want to listen to people talk about buying black dress robes for the funeral.

But he didn’t want to sit here alone either. He didn’t know what he wanted.

He heard someone come through the portrait hole, but he didn’t look up. Just continued to turn the locket over and over in his hand, staring at the burnt log.

‘What’s that?’

He looked up. Ginny was standing near him, looking at the glint of gold he was hastily shoving into his pocket. ‘Hi,’ he said hoarsely.

She looked at him carefully, and he looked back. She was so achingly beautiful. He noticed it as though realising it for the first time, though of course he thought that every time he saw her.

‘Do you want me with you, or do you want to be alone?’ she asked him.

He swallowed. ‘I want you with me,’ he said.

She smiled slightly, and sank onto the sofa beside him, slipping easily into his arms, the scent of her hair washing over him as though he were in a summer meadow. Her head rested on his shoulder. She lifted her hand, and rubbed it comfortingly over his chest, right over his heart.

He realised it not like a wave, or a bolt of lightning, but as though placing the last piece in a jigsaw, and seeing the completed picture for the first time. It immediately filled him with such a terrified agony that he almost pushed her away, because he realised what it meant.

He wanted to turn to her, to confess to her the painful feeling she was causing him, to say those foreign words, but to do so would be like tying a noose around her neck.

He realised what he had to do now, and he glanced down. The top of her head was shining coppery, golden red, and he could just see the edge of her forehead, the point of her nose, pale and dappled with freckles. Her small, warm hand continued to rub slow circles over his heart, and he wondered if she could feel in its beat the horror that had dawned on him.

_Do it now, he told himself. While you’re both alone._

He wondered if she would be angry with him. If she would cry. If she would talk him out of it. All of it sounded like torture.

_Do it now._

‘I still can’t believe he’s gone,’ she said quietly. ‘He was one of those people you just assumed would be there forever, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied. Without thinking, he bowed his head and kissed the top of her warm, sweet smelling hair, then immediately hated himself for it.

_Do it now, you coward. You selfish prick. You can’t have this. You know you can’t._

He opened his mouth; he wasn’t sure what he was going to say. Whether it would be I love you, or we can’t do this.

‘Whatever happens now, we just have to do what we think he would say is right,’ she said firmly.

He closed his eyes and swallowed again. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said, his voice gravelly.

He felt her shift, and he opened his eyes to look down and gaze into hers. They were so warm. He felt like he was melting. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Do you want to just sit quietly?’

He leaned down and kissed her, their lips soft and gentle against one another.

_You’re killing her. You selfish prick, you’re killing her._

_A few days_ , he told himself. _Let me have her for just a few more days._


	2. Ginny

He didn’t even look up when she entered the Common Room. He sat alone, brooding into the fire, his fingers fumbling over something golden. She approached him cautiously. 

‘What’s that?’ she asked. 

He blinked and looked up as he shoved whatever it was into his pocket. ‘Hi,’ he said, his voice hoarse. She studied him for a moment. She knew better than to continue to ask what it was - if she had been able to know he would have told her, and pushing him would only upset him. 

He looked drawn - tired and pale, but he was still so handsome. She felt like she could drink him in, stare at him forever - run her fingers through that mess of dark hair and drown in his eyes. She wanted to hug him forever. 

She remembered what Hermione had said, at lunch, when she had asked where he was. ‘I think he wants to be alone, Ginny - he gets like that sometimes, when he’s grieving.’ 

It was all very well assuming and thinking and presuming - and if he wanted to be alone that was all very understandable. But she thought he should at least be a part of that decision. 

‘Do you want me with you, or do you want to be alone?’ she asked him.

He looked at her; there was a faint look of surprise in his eyes. He seemed to swallow. ‘I want you with me,’ he said, his voice still gravelly. 

She wouldn’t have been offended if he had sent her away, but she couldn’t help but smile slightly as she went over to him, filled with a sad kind of happiness that he trusted her enough to let her be there. 

She curled up beside him, resting her head on his shoulder, realising quite suddenly that she had wanted physical comfort from him as much as she had thought he might want it from her. The creeping fear and sense of impending doom that had lurked in the pit of her stomach since Dumbledore died was rising again, and so she raised her hand and lay it on Harry’s chest, searching for his reassuring heartbeat, rubbing small circles that she hoped comforted him as much as they comforted her. 

The steady pulse beneath her fingertips was its own special kind of song, the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathed the accompaniment. She thought she could be lulled to sleep by it, here by the too-warm fire. 

She felt his head move slightly above her, his jaw grazing the crown of her head. She stared into the fire, the dancing flames blurring in her vision. What would happen now? What lay ahead for them? It hardly seemed real to her, any of it - it seemed ludicrous that she had seen Dumbledore, lying broken at the foot of the astronomy tower. Harry’s arms seemed to have stiffened slightly around her - perhaps he was thinking of it too. 

‘I still can’t believe he’s gone,’ she said softly. ‘He was one of those people you just assumed would be there forever, you know?’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry, and she felt the firm pressure of his lips on her head, and then, very slightly, the coolness as he breathed in against her hair and his jawline brushing against her again as he turned away. She thought suddenly and inexplicably of Tonks and Remus in the hospital wing. 

‘Whatever happens now,’ she said firmly, half to herself, ‘we just have to do what we think he would say is right.’ 

There was a slight pause from Harry, but then, in a rather strangled voice, he said, ‘whatever happens.’ 

His voice sounded so quietly distressed, that she shifted so as to be able to look up into his eyes. He gazed back mournfully, the same faraway look that he had had when she had found him by Dumbledore’s body. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, feeling strangely guilty. ‘Do you want to just sit quietly?’

In an answer she took to mean ‘yes’, he leaned down and kissed her softly. There was something aching in his tenderness, something painful in the way his hand came up to cup her face and then reach into her hair. 

He gently pushed her so that they were lying on their sides on the sofa, something he would never usually dare to do, clutching her closely to him, almost cradling her as his lips moved gently against hers and his thumb stroked lovingly against her temple. 

She opened her eyes as they broke apart, and they simply lay there, looking at one another, his hand still caressing her head, her hand still pressed against his beating heart. _I love you,_ she nearly said, because he seemed like he needed to hear it. But Harry’s eyes were, she noticed, shining as he fixed her with that intense look he sometimes got. He suddenly closed them and leaned in to kiss her again, but not before she saw a tear escape, slipping traitorously down his cheek, beneath the rim of his glasses and onto his nose. 

_You’re saying goodbye to me, she realised, as she kissed him deeply back. You’ve come up with some stupid, noble reason to say goodbye._

The hand over his heart grasped and clenched at his t-shirt. 

_And the most painful thing about it is that I’m going to let you._


End file.
